Most recruitment agencies hold far more candidates than they use. Years of applications sit in the ATS, but when a forklift role opens in Naas on a Thursday, the recruiter advertises it again instead of searching the database. This is why that happens, and what it takes to make an old database fill roles again.
Why old candidates go unused
- The facts are in the CV, not the record. Licences, tickets and work history sit in an attached file. The ATS fields that recruiters filter on are empty or out of date.
- Keyword search is unreliable. One CV says “counterbalance”, another says “forklift”, a third says “FLT”. Search for one and you miss the others.
- Location is vague. An address from three years ago, or none at all, makes it hard to know who could actually get to the site.
- Duplicates and dead records. The same person exists twice, or a record has no phone number or email, so nobody trusts the results.
The result is a recruiter who knows good people are in there somewhere but finds it quicker to post a new ad.
Step 1: turn CVs into fields
Read each candidate's CVs and record what they show against the record: licences and certificates held, roles they have done, home town and county, and their current job. Two rules matter here.
- Keep licences separate from experience. A certified forklift driver and someone who worked in a warehouse beside one are different candidates.
- Fill gaps, never overwrite. What a recruiter has already entered is usually more reliable than a CV. Where two CVs for one person disagree, flag the record for a person to check instead of guessing.
Step 2: clean up what you shouldn't keep
Find records with no way to contact the person, and duplicates of the same candidate. Decide what is merged and what is deleted. Under GDPR, personal data should be kept no longer than you need it, so a clean-up is good practice as well as useful.
Step 3: match by skill, travel and history
When a role opens, the best list combines three things:
Skill or licence
Who holds the ticket or has done the job before.
Real travel distance
Home county and neighbouring counties, not just the same city.
Past placements
Who has worked similar roles for you or applied for them before.
Not pay
Pay expectations change. They are for the conversation, not the filter.
Step 4: let the recruiter choose who hears about it
A matched list is a suggestion. The recruiter should pick who is contacted, because they know who was reliable, who has just started elsewhere and who asked not to be called before 10.
WhatsApp gets far quicker replies than email for temp and contract roles. Send from the recruiter's own business number so replies come back to them, never send the same person the same role twice, and leave anyone who replies STOP out of every future alert. Record each message and opt-out on the candidate in your ATS.
What it looks like in practice. A1ROMatch was built for Dangan Group, where it works through a database of more than 100,000 candidate records and sends role alerts from recruiters' own WhatsApp numbers.
Reactivating a candidate database — summary
- Most of what you need to know about a candidate is locked inside their CV
- Record licences, experience, location and current job as fields, filling gaps only
- Flag conflicting CVs for a person and remove records you can't use
- Match on skill, travel distance and history, never on pay
- The recruiter chooses who is contacted, and opt-outs are honoured every time